Issues
by lestater
Summary: A rentfic, my first attempt so be nice. About Maureen and some, uh, issues she's having. Also deals with April. Please please please r/r!!!
1. deception

Disclaimer: Maureen isn't mine, nor is Mark, nor will, chances are, most of the characters in this story. They belong to Jonathan Larson. Believe me, if I was brilliant like he was I'd make up my own characters.   
  
chapter one: deception   
  
She burst into the loft, so racked by convulsions she could barely get the door open. Thank God, no one was home. Hands shaking uncontrollably, she made a straight line into Roger's room, to Roger's dresser. Almost sobbing with the relief she knew would come soon, she roughly pulled open the top right-hand drawer and rooted around in the back until she found what she wanted.  
  
The needle plunged into her skin, and she slowly relaxed as the liquid flowed through her veins. She closed her eyes and smiled. Oh, so much better. She was very good at this. Better than Roger. But he just wasn't smart like she was.   
  
Roger was messy about it, he left stuff around. She, she was careful. No one suspected, no one even thought about the possibility. Maureen...on drugs? Of course not. Maureen the health nut. Maureen, the ditz. Besides, even if she was, she wasn't subtle, wasn't sneaky enough to keep it covered up. Everyone would know within days. Right?  
  
Wrong. She smiled slyly, very pleased with herself. She began to clean up, making sure everything went back exactly they way she found it. Not that Roger would notice, he was such a space cadet. But it never hurt to be careful...  
  
She wasn't really in the habit of stealing Roger's drugs. But when she was short on cash, she knew she could always count on them to be there.   
  
Maureen threw back her head and laughed, suddenly struck with the irony of it all.   
  
Mark and Roger were such fools. Mark, because he was so preoccupied with his 'troubled' roommate, he never thought to look closely at his girlfriend. Sometimes she felt like he loved Roger more than he loved her.   
  
And Roger. Roger was the real drama queen. If everyone just stopped paying attention to him, they would see. All Roger wanted was attention. That was his real drug. The chemicals were only the means he used get what he really wanted.   
  
Then there was Maureen herself. The dumb blond. She was tricking them all.   
.......  
  
She had just closed the drawer when she heard the door slam. Oh, shit, how was she going to explain why she was in Roger's room??   
  
"Hey! Anybody home?" It was Mark. Oh. Well, then, this wouldn't be a problem. She slipped out of the room and slinked up to Mark, glad she was wearing the skintight jeans and tight sweater she had chosen that morning. She slipped her arms around his neck.   
  
"Hello pookie. Where have you been all this time, leaving me all by my lonesome self?" She pretended to pout. "Oh. Well, I was at CBGB's listening to Roger play. I looked for you...but you weren't around." He looked at her suspiciously. "Where were you, anyway?"   
She rolled her eyes at him. "I was at rehearsal, silly. You know. That show I've just started?" While she had just started in a show, Maureen hadn't really been at rehearsal. She had been with the director, though...  
  
"Oh. Okay." He believed her. He always did. Sometimes Maureen wanted to tell him just how pathetic he really was. Just how many times she'd told him an obvious lie and he'd accepted it, just because he wasn't man enough to face the truth. Sometimes he just made her sick. But she put up with him anyway. Because she needed the security he offered. It was nice to have someone to come home to every night. It really was the best deal anyone could ask for. No matter how many times he caught her cheating, she was always forgiven. So she could keep him as a security blanket, a toy to play around with whenever she felt like it, and still have fun with whoever else she might want.   
  
"Hey!" cried Mark, suddenly realizing what had been bothering him. "Why were you in Roger's room?" "Me? Oh, I was..um, looking for an earring I lost the other day." She smiled and ran her fingers through Mark's hair, looking him directly in the eye. They were almost exactly the same height. "Besides," she kissed him, feather light, her lips barely touching his. "What trouble could I get into there?"   
  
"Uh-um." His voice cracked and he blushed, a light pink on his pale cheeks. "Nothing, I guess." She smiled, cat-like, and kissed him again, this time harder. 'Right answer, pookie,' she thought.   
  
The kiss ended, and he just stared at her dreamily, asking himself how in the world he had caught such a beautiful, sexy girl. The only question he asked more was why he put up with her.  
  
Suddenly his face clouded, the spell broken and his suspicion flooding back. "But you never..." She stopped his mouth with another kiss.  
  
"Mmm, Markie..." Her hands began to wander. "There's no one else home..." She was whispering close to his ear, and her tongue flicked out to lick it. "Ah, uh, um...yeah..." He gulped nervously. Somehow Maureen always managed to make him nervous. She was rejoicing. He was completely under her spell. "Come on, pookie..." She led him into their bedroom, kissing him while beginning to unbutton his shirt.   
  
He didn't ask any more questions that night.   
  



	2. repercussions

"What the fuck are you doing?"  
  
The needle fell to the floor with a clatter, just centimeters above her arm. She whirled around to see who that ragged scream of a sentence had come from.  
  
April.  
  
And an extremely scary looking April, at that. She'd obviously been crying. Actually...she still was. Mascara had made the usual dark circles under her eyes ten times darker, and black streaks trailed down her cheeks, mapping the tracks of her tears. There had been no effort to cover up her bruised, scarred arms that day. They lay open to the world, proclaiming to all what she really was.  
  
Maureen shuddered and glanced quickly down at her own arms, reassuring herself that they weren't that bad. She looked back up at April, who still stood there in the doorway, tears running down her cheeks, eyes riveted to the needle Maureen had dropped to the floor.  
  
"A-April?" She stuttered, once in her life not having the upper hand.   
  
April's gaze shot up to her, startled at first, as though she had forgotten Maureen was in the room. Then it became angry. "What the fuck are you doing?" she repeated. She advanced on Maureen, her voice shaking with emotion, the tears coming faster now.   
  
"I...April, I can explain, please, just..."  
  
"Oh, shut the fuck up." She spat the words out. "I've always hated you, you know that? You, you're so fake, dishonest, greedy." She laughed bitterly. "Even if Mark doesn't see it. I do. We all do."  
  
Maureen just stared, unable to think of any sort of retort. April had always been the one she couldn't intimidate or fool. Up till now she'd just avoided all unnecessary contact.  
  
"For Mark's sake, though, we put up with you. That's the only reason." April was now directly in Maureen's face. "So when he finally realizes what a whore you are and gets the courage to dump you, you'll be out in the cold. You won't have any friends. And everyone will be glad to see it."  
  
Maureen backed away, quickly, scared now. April had been known to be violent before...Her foot hit something. She looked down and saw the shiny metal of the syringe, still full and ready to float her away...  
  
She bent down to pick it up, but April, who had turned away, doubled over and started heaving racking sobs suddenly turned around and knocked the needle out of Maureen's hands, sending it flying. "You fucking idiot! You can't even know..." She started sobbing again, and then suddenly she let out a scream, scaring Maureen out of her wits. "Why me? Why fucking me?"  
  
Maureen backed as far away from her as it was possible to be and stated with wide eyes as April ran over to where the needle had landed. She watched as the distraught girl plunged it mercilessly into her arm, stabbing herself several times before finally finding a vein pushing the plunger down.  
  
She was about to fling it away again, when a movement Maureen had made caught her eye. She glared at her and shook her head bitterly, a look of pure and utter hate on her face. "God, I should just leave it here..." Again a bitter laugh escaped her lips. "You deserve it more than I do." But as she turned and ran from the room, she kept the silver needle clutched tightly in her hand.  
  
Maureen heard her slam the bathroom door, and only then did her shakily got up from the wall farthest from the door, where she had sunken down, unable to handle April's screams.   
  
But she only got up to collapse into the chair that sat near the dresser, finding that her legs couldn't support her.  
  
What the hell had that been about? She'd never seen April like that before...Well, she'd seen her bitch people out plenty of times, but crying?   
  
Never.  
  
Maureen just sat there like that for what could have been anything from five minutes to an hour. But it suddenly occurred to her that April had been very quiet for a long time. She was so shaken, she forgot that she was supposed to be angry. That April was the enemy. She was so shaken, she had started to care.  
  
"April?" She got slowly to her feet, and found that she could stand. "April?" She called louder. There was no answer. She walked to the bathroom door and knocked. Still nothing. Panicky now, Maureen tried the door.   
  
Unlocked.  
  
It swung open, and Maureen stared with wide-eyed horror at the scene that lay before her. April lay sprawled on the floor, her wrists slashed open, the blood, still flowing, forming a crimson red puddle against the stark white linoleum tiles.   
  
  
Beside the body lay three things.   
  
The razor, the blade crusted with blood. Maureen passed quickly over that.   
The needle that April had carried out of the room with her.   
  
And a note. Blue ink on white paper. Maureen read the three words scrawled hastily in April's large, loose script, and felt her gaze drift, as if by it's own will, back to the syringe.   
  
The needle fell to the floor with a clatter, just centimeters above her arm.  
  
Maureen saw her vision tunnel. Blackness closed in from all sides, and she felt her knees buckle.  
  
Her last conscious thought was about that note.  
  
And how easily that 'we' could have meant three people.  
  
Instead of two.  



End file.
